Despite the enormous advantages it can offer, 70% of small businesses lack an SEO strategy. Why is that? After all, search engine optimization is an absolute necessity in today’s world, and quality SEO for businesses can be the difference between thriving and withering.
The reason? Not enough businesses really understand what SEO is and what the types of SEO are. It’s fair enough: running a business eats up so much time that not many leaders can find the space in their day to read up on SEO.
Well, let’s see if we can offer a quick crash course for time-strapped business leaders! Here’s a quick overview of the main types of SEO.
On-Page SEO
The clue is in the name with this one: on-page SEO refers to search engine optimization that happens (wait for it) on the webpage! This is about cleverly using techniques to ‘teach’ search engine crawlers what your website is about so that they surface it when users search for related topics.
For example, let’s say you’re a gardener in Washington. You have a website where people can see the services you offer and hire you to come tend to their gardens. Naturally, you want people Googling ‘gardeners in Washington’ to see your website near the top of the search results list.
To achieve this, you include lots of relevant keywords throughout your website, produce high-quality content pertaining to gardening, and include lots of links to other brilliant resources. This way, Google learns you’re not only a site about gardening in Washington, but you’re a high-quality site about gardening in Washington.
Check out this page for more on industry-specific SEO.
Off-Page SEO
And here’s the other side of the coin. This is the SEO that doesn’t happen on your website.
Think of the gardener example again. Another great way to educate search engines about your site is to produce great content for external websites that refer and link back to your own site.
This creates a virtuous circle where both your site and the site you are writing for benefit from your content. Not bad, right?
Black Hat SEO
And here’s what not to do. Black Hat SEO refers to kinds of SEO that explicitly violate Google guidelines (and the guidelines of other search engines). They’re cheap, but they rely on all sorts of underhand tactics like keyword stuffing to bump up websites in search results.
The worst thing? They usually don’t work. Search engines are vigilant about this kind of thing and constantly develop ways to fight it. So don’t waste your time and money!
The Many Types of SEO
So there you have it, a few of the main types of SEO. Whether you’re a small business or a megacorp, SEO has something to offer you. So don’t let this be the end of your SEO journey!
After all, who doesn’t want to be top of the Google results?
Liked this article? Check out the rest of our site for more!